While Postmaster General Louis DeJoy claimed that he could assure members of Congress that mail-in ballots for the upcoming November presidential election would be delivered on-time–despite notifications to states from the US Postal Service that they cannot make such a guarantee–DeJoy is now the defendant in a series of lawsuits seeking to stop the dismantling of the mail service he’s undertaking.
According to Reuters, despite DeJoy claiming that he’s halted all changes to mail service until the start of 2021, much of the damage may already be done. Details in lawsuits filed since Tuesday enumerate some of the actions DeJoy has overseen to incapacitate mail delivery already.
The Postal Service had planned to remove 671 mail sorting machines nationwide, including 502 delivery barcode sorting machines capable of processing 35,000 pieces of mail per hour, by Sept. 30. As of Aug. 16 it had already decommissioned 95% of its target, according to a lawsuit filed jointly by the Urban League, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.
As has been documented, USPS headquarters have told local offices not to attempt to bring these machines back online.
DeJoy planned to decommission 10% of all sorting machines before the election.
Many of those machines were in “blue states” or states expected to be battleground states, including Michigan and Wisconsin, in the November election. Reuters has a list of many of these USPS orders here.